Staff views on remote work among top issues for company bosses, new survey finds

Staff expectations in relation to remote and hybrid working has remained the most pressing topic for company managements in 2023 according to the newly published Ibec Workplace Trends and Insights report.

The survey of almost 400 firms, a mix from domestically owned and multinationals, spread across a wide range of sectors, finds that companies are still feeling the impact of changed employee attitudes to work during the pandemic and, in many cases, still not settled on a long term strategy to address or accommodate them.

Just over a quarter of respondents said employee expectations with regard to the issue was the single factor having the greatest impact on the running of their business while almost two thirds rated it in their top five.

This issue crops up repeatedly in the survey with roughly half of firms saying they find it harder to recruit for onsite only roles and 69 per cent saying it is influencing their business operating model due to the need to manage talent.

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In terms of the polices being applied, the most common approach (27 per cent, down slightly from 2022) remains for managers to decide where their teams work but 18 per cent of firms have a policy of requiring staff to be onsite at least three days a week with 16 per cent setting the minimum at two days. Those figures are down by 5 and 2 per cent receptively on 2022.

Almost nine in 10, 89 per cent, find the approach of having core compulsory days to be effective.

Just 7 per cent say they require staff to be onsite all of the time and 4 per cent require four day attendance but both of those numbers are up on 12 months previously.

The largest single cohort, however, are the 36 per cent of firms who have yet to completely settle on what their long term approach is going to be.

A key factor at play is that respondents generally suggest they continue to find the labour market tight with 38 per cent citing the availability of talent or requisite skills as their biggest recruitment concern for 2024 and 18 per cent saying it is a fear that competition for talent will push up wages.

More than 80 per cent of firms who participated suggested they expect employee pay to be increased in 2024 and the average figure quoted was 3.8 per cent. That’s almost exactly what companies predicted in last year’s survey but they now say they actually increased wages by 4.4 per cent.

Hotels, tourism and leisure along with retail experienced the largest increases and anticipate the largest during the year ahead, most likely due to their exposure to the significant moves by Government with regard to the minimum wage.

The combination of that and increased regulation will inevitable have an impact suggests Maeve McElwee, Ibec’s employer relations executive director.

“Our survey reflects the increasing scale of labour market regulation and the significance of those implications for our respondents,” she says “Competitiveness and cost-of-living wage expectations are a key concern.

“Initiatives, including the government policy of moving to a Living Wage at 60 per cent of median earnings by 2026, statutory sick pay, pension auto-enrolment in 2024 as well as numerous additional protected leave provisions are driving a re-evaluation of processes to utilise more technology and redesign roles to optimise the unique people skills in organisations.”